One day while crossing the ferry from San Francisco to Oakland, Mrs. White through inspiration spoke to her husband.
In the fall of 1874 at a camp meeting in Yountville, the president of the California Conference, Elder Loughborough, presented the need of a publishing house to the people assembled.
Equipment installed included a four-roller air spring drum cylinder press powered by an upright donkey engine, a paper cutter, a book trimmer, and some new type.
The town leaders, upon hearing that the Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association in Oakland, which had gained a fair and growing reputation, was looking for a more rural atmosphere in which to establish itself, offered the Press five choice acres of land as well as a pair of lots for a church or meeting house.
As a result, real estate in Mountain View began to advance, and area business grew.
A brick building soon took shape on the land donated by the town, and work began to come in from customers who patronized the plant in Oakland.
Mrs. White implored Management to rely on God alone and give up the commercial work that had followed them from Oakland and had received priority over church publications.
On July 20, three months after the earthquake, on a Friday about midnight, a fire of undetermined origin broke through the roof in the northeast corner of the photoengraving room.
[4][5][6] By the early 1980s, the cost-of-living index in the densely populated San Francisco Bay area made it almost impossible for young families to work at the plant.
In 1983, the Board of Trustees, along with the General Conference Committee voted that the plant be sold and a move made to another area.
From the humble beginning in 1874 when the first Signs of the Times was issued, with Elder James White editing the paper, setting the type, and printing the pages, and with his son as a delivery boy, the institution has grown to become the employer of over 250 workers at a plant larger than three football fields and generating an annual income of over $40 million.
In 1994, Pacific Press began management of literature evangelist work with the establishment of the HHES (Home Health Education Services) Division.
In August, 2013, the Pacific Press board voted to return management of the stores operated by the Retail Division to the local Seventh-day Adventist conferences.